Beaming Direction

Analysis of a fixed "boom" in the attic

One problem with attic antennas is the space available tends to allow for beam construction only along one axis. If your house lines up with a favored direction, then that's very good. If not, it can be bad.

Fortunately, my house attic "boom" is oriented ENE at about 60 degrees from north. That places the center-line of the beam (going east) on Kenya. And (going west), on ZL land. In the plot below I have added center-line +/- 45 degree lines to show the typical coverage of a 90 degree beam-width pattern.

The 40m antenna already has an omni-direction capability as part of the phased drive. And because of the success of the 10m dipole in the recent 10m ARRL contest, I am looking into ways to multi-band that element to provide some additional coverage on 12m and perhaps 15m.